A New Visions Commentary
paper published April 2004 by The National Center for Public
Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited.

Jobs are a hot political issue these days.

While technical support and textiles jobs
continue to be "outsourced" to foreign workers in countries
like China and India, we must not forget that over 300,000 new
jobs were created in America just this past March. America's economic
growth is tied to trade relationships abroad. It's a give-and-take
global relationship. A protectionist trade policy only hurts our
long-term prospects for prosperity.

Levi Strauss may no longer make jeans
in the United States, but foreign automakers like Mercedes, Nissan,
BMW and Honda all now have factories in the American South. And
this is just scratching the surface of foreign investment in the
American workforce.

While outsourcing is a term that's on
everyone's lips, there's little concern over something called
"environmental justice." It's a policy advocated by
elite environmentalists, and it is killing job prospects in minority
communities. If outsourcing is considered bad, environmental justice
is much, much worse and could lead to further outsourcing totally
unrelated to trade policy.

In 1996, Shintech Inc. - a Japanese chemical
company - wanted to build a $700 million facility in Convent,
Louisiana to make the polyvinyl chloride that is used in building
materials, upholstery and clothing. Shintech promised to hire
hundreds of area residents for the construction of the plant and
provide $500,000 in local job training. After the plant was built,
it would employ 165 people with salaries beginning at $12 an hour
- twice the average wage area residents made working in the region's
sugar cane fields.

Shintech was never able to build the plant
in this poor, job-starved community. Despite strong local support
among residents, politicians and the NAACP, EPA officials in Washington,
D.C. - at the urging of environmentalists - denied Shintech a
permit based on concerns about environmental justice.

Environmental justice policies are supposed
to keep businesses from inflicting a "disparate impact"
on minority communities, but this vague definition does not weigh
the costs against the benefits of introducing a job-producing
industry to a poverty-stricken area. To the elitists in the environmental
movement, it's a black and white issue where businesses are guilty
until proven innocent. In reality, it's about black and white
jobs. Those people who need jobs the most often find their prospects
gloomier after environmental justice concerns are raised.

Former Detroit mayor Dennis Archer has
complained that the EPA's environmental justice policies are "so
vague and so broad that it nullifies everything that we have done
to attract companies." It seems activists are willing to
make an issue out of just about everything. When a formerly blighted
neighborhood in Harlem was cleaned up and a Home Depot that created
400 area jobs moved in, it was criticized by environmentalists
because it wasn't a "clean industry" like a school and
increased area truck traffic.

President Bush has endured harsh criticism
for his administration's stance on outsourcing, but it's important
to know his likely opponent this fall has heartily embraced the
elitist definition of environmental justice.

At an Earth Day event in 2003, Senator
John Kerry - the likely Democratic nominee for president - said:
"For too long, polluters thought they could get away with
breaking the law as long as it was in someone else's backyard.
Those days need to end. Under a Kerry administration, no community
will have their environment overlooked. They will have the power
to fight back."

Wrong-headed environmental justice policies
encourage companies to outsource. Rather than deal with stricter
and costlier American regulations, it's cheaper to abandon factories
here and start fresh abroad. That's already happening. In the
case of Shintech, environmental justice enforcement discouraged
a foreign company wanting to work with American labor.

In 2000, The National Center for Public
Policy Research surveyed 69 community-level environmental groups
about "environmental justice." When presented with the
choice between jobs and justice, 72 percent didn't think jobs
or wages should be sacrificed to achieve environmental goals.
Likewise, 57 percent said environmental goals must be balanced
with economic opportunity.

Environmental goals are important, but
they cannot come at the expense of people and their livelihoods.
Environmental justice polices, as advocated by the environmental
elite, will hurt our national economy and our community.

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(Kevin Martin, a member of the
African-American leadership network Project 21, is an environmental
contractor in Maryland. Comments many be sent to [email protected].)

Note: New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author,
and not necessarily those of Project 21.